Life in Wire, Gems and Stanzas

Archive for the ‘jewelry’ Category

At a recent show, a woman surprised me as I was packing up to go home. I had just put my wire-wrapped hearts in their box, but hadn’t yet closed it. She looked at some bracelets and liked them. Next she asked for my business card. I turned away from her to get the card since it was already packed away. When I turned back, I gave her the card and closed the box of hearts, packing it away.

When I started the show, I had 11 and hadn’t sold any. When I counted the hearts as I prepared to put them away, there were also 11.

My next show was the first time since the last that I touched the box of hearts, and no-one else had touched the box. As I laid them out, I checked against my item list. The list had 11 wire-wrapped hearts. The box only had 10.

I checked the rest of the items as calmly as I could, since I was almost ready to start selling and needed to stay as focused as possible. When I had a break, my mind kept going back to the theft.

While theft is an expected loss in any business, the first to happen to me hit hard. This is not a business where someone else designed and executed the pieces and I’ve just ordered them to sell. I created the pieces myself. The stolen heart wrap was from the first set of items I wrapped after being able to offer gold-wrapped (14K gold-filled wire) items instead of just silver. That set of hearts were also an uncommon stone, a rare find at a gem show. The stones, the wire and the design process was special to me.

I can’t pursue this person legally because although I can pick her out of a group, I don’t have any other details to start an investigation. The theft will be written off as a loss. Those are the practicalities of business. That’s been handled.